This invention relates to forward viewing apparatus, and in particular relates to forward-viewing apparatus for use on vehicles such as motor vehicles.
It is said that a driver of a motor vehicle should, when driving in a stream of traffic, always drive two or three cars ahead. That expression means that a driver should look ahead to a vehicle two or three vehicles in front of his or her own, so that the driver may react to any change of direction, or more importantly speed, of that vehicle, rather than wait for such a change in the vehicle immediately in front of his or her own.
However, in the traffic mix these days in, for example, Australian cities, it is becoming more and more difficult to drive two or three vehicles ahead, because drivers often cannot see past the vehicle immediately in front of his or her vehicle. Many vehicles now have heavily tinted windows, which makes it difficult or impossible to see through a car or station wagon to vehicles in front of it. Furthermore, there are many more trucks, vans, and in particular four wheel drive “recreational vehicles”, which either do not have any windows, or have heavily tinted windows, or simply ride too high for a driver to see past them.
There have been some attempts to provide mechanisms for forward-view mirrors, to enable a driver to see around such a vehicle which is immediately in front of the driver's vehicle. U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,779, apart from providing in the “Background of the Invention” section of the specification a brief description of the problem, and a useful summary of pre-1986 prior art, discloses a complicated combined forward and rearward viewing mirror assembly, having three mirrors in two body members, one of which members is attached to the door of the vehicle, and the other one of the members is coupled to the first body member by means of a linkage.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,120 describes a forward-view mirror arrangement adapted to be located on the opposite side of a vehicle to the driver of that vehicle, such that “dead angles” may be eliminated. FIG. 3 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,120 shows a two-mirror arrangement for directing light entering a housing through a transparent cover to the driver of the vehicle.
Despite the existence of conceptual forward-view mirrors, as exemplified by U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,685,779 and 4,268,120, current motor vehicles do not feature forward-view mirrors.
NMRA Insurance, an Australian insurance company, released, on 31 Oct. 2002, a “World First Reversing Visibility Index”, which resulted from measurements of the visibility from the drivers seat of a vehicle “out the back of a car”. Many vehicles tested had large blind spots behind the vehicle. In media coverage of the Index, it was suggested that one way of overcoming a blind spot problem was to install a video camera at the rear of a vehicle, pointing rearwards, the camera being linked to a small LCD screen located in the internal rear view mirror. However, the cost of such an arrangement was suggested to be in the order of $1,500. Such a figure would be in general applicable to a forward-view arrangement, except that ideally two cameras, one on each side of the vehicle, and two screens, would be required. That would double the cost, making it prohibitive for most persons.